


Brass

by Batdad (MizGoat)



Series: The Quartermaster [5]
Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Flirting, M/M, Slice of Life, meet cute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-09
Updated: 2018-02-09
Packaged: 2019-03-15 17:43:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13618437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MizGoat/pseuds/Batdad
Summary: Tadhg might be getting all the jobs that Steady doesn't want, but sometimes those jobs have unexpected perks. Like cute pilots who like to flirt.





	Brass

**Author's Note:**

> I should probably own up to a couple of facts here at this point:  
> 1) I am wholesale making shit up where I can't find an answer on how the GAR is run.  
> 2) I have read way more historical military fiction than sci-fi military fiction, and I suspect it shows.
> 
> But anyway, meet Brass, my newest OC.

The promotion to corporal had been a pleasant surprise, but Tadhg hadn’t been entirely unaware of its possibility. Steady wasn’t exactly shy about treating him as a second, and Tadhg wasn’t so modest about his own talents as to pretend he didn’t know why. He and Steady were good at supply management, and they liked their work. But for all that Steady had carefully avoided promotion to stay in his position as quartermaster, he didn’t love every part of the work involved. Now that Tadhg was his corporal he could pass those duties off.

Chief of these was the management of the quartermaster’s store. Steady detested the store. Mostly he resented having to make the call on if the equipment needed to be reissued because it had been legitimately damaged or destroyed in the line of duty and the army would pay for it, or if it had been damaged due to negligence or misuse and the soldier it had been issued to was going to get his already meager stipend docked.

“If it were up to me, we wouldn’t bother with that nonsense. What good does it do anyone to have men using damaged kit cause they don’t want to take the ding. Let the COs deal with any discipline issues if someone’s being a reckless with supply. Still, you write too much off and before you know it you have some chair jockey, birth born, know nothing from Defence Procurement auditing you to prove that he gets paid to do more than breathe with an open mouth.” Steady typically saved all his best invectives for Defence Procurement. He disliked them only slightly less than the Separatists.

“At least the Separatists admit that they are trying to kill us,” was a phrase that Tadhg had overheard Steady mumble at his workstation more than once.

Tadhg, however, liked running the store. He got to talk to people outside his squad, which let him gather news and gossip. And he had suddenly found he was now worth knowing and worth being on good terms with. He knew that the sudden felicity was more than a little mercenary, but he was just vain enough to enjoy it anyway. 

Sometimes though, it was just sitting behind a counter for hours because they hadn’t seen much action recently and no one had broken anything. Tadhg was just starting to wonder if he could close early without anyone noticing when someone broke his reviery.

“Hello! You aren’t the usual quartermaster. Not that I’m complaining. You're much cuter than the old man.”

The clone at the counter was in pilot’s gear and had a wide black stripe that had been tattooed from ear to ear traversing over his cheekbones and nose. His grin was lopsided, leaning to the left while his hair had a rather exaggerated part to the right giving his whole face a rather comical lean. He also had, Tadhg realized somewhat belatedly, a hose pipe for his air filter that had a rather large hole in it.

“Er yes? I run the store now. What happened to the hose?” Tadhg held out his hands, and gestured for the damaged hose to be handed over. He hoped the heat he felt in his cheeks wasn’t too evident.

“Got hung up on a door latch during an evac drill, of all things.” He shrugged then furrowed his brows and frowned. “Kriff, the old man didn’t bite it did he?”

“What? No! Sarge is fine. He just hates the store, so I’ve run it since my promotion,” Tadhg answered in a rush.

“Oh well, uh, congrats, I guess, Corporal…” He trailed off.

“Tadhg.”

“Tadhg.  And glad to hear it. I figure having the old timers who’ve been kicking it sense Geonosis has to be good luck, right?” The lopsided grin was back. Tadhg thought better of voicing his opinion that nearly every battalion must have at least a few troopers who were at the first battle of the war.

“I wouldn’t recommend letting the Sarge know that you think he’s lucky,” he tried instead. It won him a deep, earnest laugh that made Tadhg’s stomach go tight.

“Name?” Tadhg asked, retreating into the far safer world of paperwork.

“Brass,” he answered and rested his elbows on the counter so he could lean in. “Oh, you probably need my number, CT-5/360.”

“Ah, I’ll need that too, yeah.” Tadhg tried a small sideways grin of his own, but he suspected that he didn’t wield it quite as effectively as Brass did. For one thing, his haircut was symmetrical.

“You can’t tell me there’s a spot on those forms of yours for my real name.” Brass was leaning awfully close now.

“No. But did you want me to keep calling you CT-5/360?” Tadhg was certain he could feel every muscle in his shoulders tense and then forcibly release as he turned to lean in as well.

“Well,” Brass drew the word out of a moment before conspiratorially ducking his head low. “Only if you really wanted to.”

This time it was Tadhg’s turn to laugh. And he saw with some slight satisfaction that Brass’s cheeks were just a little pinker than usual as well.


End file.
